Custom printing of apparel, beverage vessels, novelty items and other objects, based upon user-specified digital graphical images, is presently available in the market. For example, Zazzle, Inc. of Redwood City, Calif. has become a market leader in producing custom-printed products based on user interaction with online servers through a graphical user interface. Most custom printed apparel uses ink-jet printing, or a variation, to produce the final printed product.
In non-computerized printing, screen printing of apparel using fine-mesh screens and screen printing inks is known to provide superior color saturation, appearance and durability as compared to ink-jet printing. “Silk-screened” apparel has been available for some time, based upon manually prepared artwork and screens. The manual labor involved in creating the artwork and screens typically means that screen printing is economically inefficient when used to reproduce small quantities of products. Further, there has been no online system available to create custom screen printed products based on digital images provided by a consumer without such manual editing.
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.